


All of these years you've been lonely

by Starrie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: F/M, Mental Link, Mention of past non-consensual mind control, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie/pseuds/Starrie
Summary: (Spoilers for the last Jedi)The link between Rey and Kylo Ren persists. Though their bodies drift further and further apart, their minds stay twined together.





	All of these years you've been lonely

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Keaton Henson's [Lying to you](https://youtu.be/Y6-QvBz9_lY).

For so long Rey was alone. Back then she spoke to a scant few people a day, if at all. And those people weren't the sort to be called friends, or even enemies. She hadn't felt the Force back then. Or, perhaps she had, but hadn't listened to it.

Things had changed. 

"Are you there?" she asked aloud. She hoped her disdain was clear enough, but conveying anything with dignity became difficult when privacy is a commodity out of her grasp. She was in the lavatory. Which she supposed would have to do.

"Of course," he replied. And he was right there in the cramped room with her.

"It's not too late."

He laughed, and she bristled. 

"It's not. If you were all dark..." she paused, and tried to sort herself out, her chin jutting stubbornly out at him. He makes her a child. But the alternative would to become something more like him. And she would rather die. "If you were all dark you couldn't be here."

He laughed, again, then his face settled into a twisted smile. "Or perhaps I am, and _you're_ the one who has strayed from her side."

She recoiled. "Never," she spat.

His lips twisted more, casting light onto his scar, though it remained barely visible. It had healed well, she thought, which was amazing, even knowing what the medical teams he had access to could accomplish. She couldn't believe it had been so long since she had given it to him, but then barely any time at all as well. She had wondered whether that was the moment that linked them, even before Snoke's meddling. But truly she knew that it was before that, too. If he had never breached her mind, she could never have found her footing with the Force in the way that she had.

"The future is malleable," he said, like he was commenting on the weather, or low long it had been since they last spoke. "But I suppose you believe it can only go your way."

She shook her head. "Of course not! But I owe it to—" to who? She thought of their faces. Of Finn, of Poe, of Leia, of Luke. Of everyone who had died. She would never be able to live up to them. She swallowed, and forced the rest of her words out around the lump in her throat. " _Everyone_ to try!"

"Naive." She flinched like the word was a blow.

"Says the great Kylo Ren," she replied, her scorn at the name he had given himself real enough, though she knew she couldn't hide her intent to distract him. "You can't escape who you are, Ben Solo. _You_ are naive. And a coward." 

Her words stung him. His face showed nothing, but she felt the prickle in her heart, a feeling which must have found its way back to him again as well.

"Do you think you could ever kill me?" he asked, his voice even colder than the moment before. 

"In a heartbeat."

_"You're lying."_

Like when she had looked into the endless reflections, there she _had_ found an end, and she will here, too. She felt him feel the pain in her heart and felt the pain reflected in his heart, which he then felt again.

"Do you," she had begun to say, not knowing what words would stir the air in the lavatory next, "want to cut yourself off from me?"

She expected him to lie. Or at least to cut himself off from her, temporarily. But instead he said, "No."

He kept his eyes down.

She thought that she might understand him. She never wanted to be alone again, either.

"I could have taught you," he said. His eyes remained down. With her location, it made it look like he had a vested interest in the content of the toilet.

"Will you look at me?" she said, again without knowing what her words would be.

He did. His eyes were so full of emotions that she couldn't pick a single one out of the turmoil. It hurt to watch. And he felt that hurt, and broke her gaze. "You need not pity me."

Anger welled up, she fought it back down. And failed, snapping at him. "It isn't pity!" She had never been good with corralling her emotions. When she had been alone, managing it had been easier. Losing her temper at a wall didn't have the same repercussions as losing her temper at a person. Even a person like Kylo Ren. "We are linked. I..." She tried to make an offering.

He recoiled.

"You _are_ the same, aren't you?" she said. She meant _lonely_. She meant _scared_. She meant connected to everything in a way that words can't capture and she meant that no one else alive understands how that burns. If there were such a person, she would know. And she would know because she would be linked to them. She would be linked to them like she was linked to Kylo.

"I _would_ have taught you."

"I would have learned."

He pulled off a glove, like he had done for her once before. He didn't reach for her hand with it. He reached for her cheek. He brushed his thumb over it. She felt the pressure on her skin, and she felt Kylo feel that pressure. She realised that he was tracing his own scar. She reached up to trace it for herself, and ran her thumb down the healed skin. There was less feeling in his cheek than hers. She leaned in, and closed her eyes, and felt him go.

She shouldn't have expected anything else.

She dropped her hand, and flushed the toilet. The sanitizing spray stung a cut on one of her fingers, and she felt an echo of it from someone far away.

**Author's Note:**

> First star wars fic, woo! If you want to say hi or anything I have a twitter over at [sportsanimes](http://twitter.com/sportsanimes) which says plenty about what I spend my time on.


End file.
